“For mobile, 2019 will be a year of evolution rather than revolution. At Adjust, we expect to see many of the current hot topics — such as video ad formats and fraud prevention — continue to be a focus in the new year. From an analytics perspective, we predict a welcome increase in efficiency. Marketers today spend a huge amount of time working across multiple tools, platforms, and dashboards, and reconciling these various data sets can take up a huge amount of time. Building tools that consolidate these platforms will be key — and this is our big focus in 2019. Automation will mean marketers no longer have to do the heavy lifting to see where they can optimize. With data in the palm of their hand, they’ll be able to focus on the strategy and creativity straight away. Automation doesn’t mean that jobs will be at risk, but that mobile marketers’ work will evolve. After all, machines may be good at crunching numbers — but humans will always be significantly better at coming up with clever, creative ideas.”

Highly innovative, polished and curated apps will be able to scale meaningful services globally, especially in the less popular app categories, such as the Medical category, which will create the biggest learnings in the app industry in terms of scalability and retention.”

“Companies waste a lot of money acquiring mobile installs — currently $2.89 per install — only to see 79% of users never return after the first visit, and 2% of users ghost your app by Day-90. Engagement platforms help brands increase their share of highly engaged customers by 37% and the number of users who make in-app purchases in the first 30 days alone by 5x.Mobile’s impact on loyalty and revenue is undeniable. And modern brands can’t afford to miss this opportunity. In 2019, I expect to see more brands ramp up their investment in mobile engagement campaigns and give mobile the spotlight it deserves — as the heart of their monetization strategy.”

“Marketing will play an increasingly growing role in an app’s success. That’s because broken app store discovery will lead to a higher share of non-organic installs in the app install pie (up 75% in India since 2015, according to our data). Marketers will, therefore, need to be more data-driven than ever to justify spend. This includes two levels: professional development (learning SQL, Python, and advanced Excel to have enough technical understanding to work in synergy with data scientists and product managers and challenge them); and measuring everything that can be measured to pinpoint successes and failures. The share of non-organic will also grow because many more channels will open up, shedding more and more light on the full consumer journey beyond a single device. As a result, what was previously thought of as an organic install will actually be tied to marketing activities on other channels and devices.”

Privacy protection and regulation were key developments last year and this will likely continue in 2019. GDPR was the first step in this direction for the EU and I believe US regulations will happen next year. Customers are also looking to reduce screen times and are becoming more aware, hence the prominence to approach the whole customer journey with performance outcomes increases for Mobile Marketers. Another big trend we see at Applift is that western markets like the US have led publisher monetization trends for a long time but markets like China, Japan, India, and Indonesia are emerging trendsetters.

What are the biggest trends you foresee for 2019? Find us on our social channels and let us know what you think!

And before we sign off for this year, we want to thank our readers for joining us as we mapped the latest from ad tech in 2018. If you’d like to send over suggestions on a topic that you want us to cover on our blog, send it over to blog@applift.com!

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